Otter and Dragon

Gloria King

Description

After unsuccessfully searching for love most of her adult life, Gloria, at 60, met Ken King, and finally found the soulmate she had always yearned for. Only twenty-two months later, Ken died of cancer. This is the love story of how Gloria made sense of unexpected love and loss through a journey of metaphysical discovery and reconnection with both Ken and Spirit. Drawing on her eclectic exploration of journaling and dreams, poetry and music, numerology and Runes, sacraments and ceremony, the author reveals the transcendent power of active self-healing, faith in the unseen, and the power of love. Readers of this candid account of the ups and downs of grief will find inspiration to forgive themselves, look inward for hope, and reconnect with departed loved ones on both sides of the veil.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé mentale & traumatisme
• Santé mentale
• Santé mentale
• Death
• Grief
• Self-help
• Bereavement

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798765240007
• Langue: English

Extrait

Otter and Dragon
 
a Love Story
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gloria King
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Gloria King.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com
844-682-1282
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3999-5 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-7652-4000-7 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date:  03/15/2023
 
 
 
To Kenneth, my best friend, husband, and loving companion forever, whose strength of character, love, and steadfastness sustains me still. You made me laugh and filled my life with song. You are the one my Soul will always love. You broke my heart, and you healed it. Thank you. All is well.
and
To Gwendolyn Jansma, my Spiritual Mother and Mentor, whose love, support, and guidance changed my life. You are my North Star and my Rock. You opened my heart, taught me to trust, and told me I couldn’t do it wrong. You are the wind beneath my wings. Thank you. All is well.
 
I love you both more than this book or any words can ever encompass, and I hear your laughter often as you plot together endlessly for my higher good. You are written on my Soul. There is no veil betwee n us.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1: The End
2: The Dark Night
3: The Beginning
4: Reflection
5: The Search
6: The Conjunctio
7: Completion
8: Beyond the Dark Night
9: Transitions
10: The Power of Love
Afterword
Additional Reading
Epigraphs
Acknowledgments
With Love and Gratitude . . .
To my Editor, Stephanie Kadel Taras without whose friendship, guidance, suggestions, and “due dates” this voyage might never have been completed. You have been my sextant, my anchor, and my sails. May you walk the Beauty Way. Thank you.
and
To my Family, my Friends, and my Sisters of the Heart who held me through the fire, allowed me to walk the road I had to walk without judgment or expectation, grounding me in their love and steadfastness throughout the journey. Blessings to all of you. Thank you.
and
To Spirit, Universe, God-Goddess-All That Is who gave me breath, whose Own Breath whispers in my ear, who lifts me up when I am too broken to fly. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
 
                      You made your exit
                            while my head was tu rned.
                      Deliberately I looked at vistas far from you.
                      Too many unformed words of rage
                            stiffened my neck from tur ning.
                      You made your exit
                            while my feet were kicking at the r opes
                            that tie d us.
                      Deliberately I didn’t wave goo dbye.
                      My hands were stuffed in pocketfuls of fear.
                      You made your exit
                            while my heart was numb . . .
                      It took me years to rea lize
                            I could not say goodbye to you
                            until, deliberately, I’d said h ello.
                      — Gwendolyn Jansma, from
                          “Detour” in Gwenana – Her W ords
Preface
When I think back on those early days of Ken and me, of the days of bliss, I recall several things that stand out as defining, forming the essence of Otter and Dragon. There were some ordinary and extraordinary moments quite early on that established a pattern for us and now permeate my memory of our time together, identifying for me who we were as a couple: eye-to-eye, holding hands, oneness and twoness, the vesica pisces, otter and dragon.
The first I noticed almost immediately. From the start, we always looked at each other directly, eye to eye, when we talked. This habit dissipated some over time, of course, but always returned when the conversation held a particular level of importance. This was a habit I had often noticed with my spiritual mentor, Gwen Jansma, how she greeted people with this direct, eye-to-eye gaze that seemed to connect our souls and seal those energies together. It was a bonding process that I’ve not often experienced; as a culture, we tend to be not very good at looking directly at each other. I know I feel that way, and I’ve always had trouble doing that, except with Gwen – and Ken.
The next was spending time hand-in-hand. Holding hands just came naturally, was never awkward. This is an ordinary thing; many couples hold hands. But again, it had never been my experience, so it came as a delicious surprise to me that he would just take my hand so often – sitting on the sofa talking, driving in the car, walking down the street, lying in bed, each reading a book (though it made turning the pages a little tricky at first).
“Oneness and Twoness,” well that was a conversation topic we returned to many times. I have no memory of how it started. Much the same as many of our conversations, I suspect. One of us would ponder some idea or statement out loud and then we just wandered around in it for a while together. Sometimes, we never really got to the end of what something held for us; such was the case of Oneness and Twoness, as we kept finding new ways to look at it.
It began, I believe, with a pondering of the oneness that was each of us and the twoness of what was growing between us. Most of my life I had spent in a lifestyle of oneness, having been a single woman at that point for 30 years. Although I had been in relationships since my divorce in 1982, I had always lived alone and had enjoyed it, preferred it. On the other hand, Ken had almost always been part of a twoness, having married out of college and then remarried again after the break-up of his first marriage. I had come into his life well after his second marriage was over, but with two young adult kids still living at home, he’d really never had much of a single life.
It had come as a surprise to him that he could experience singleness, oneness, within our twoness. I encouraged him to be on his own when he wanted, to go play golf with a buddy or create a place where he could be alone in the house once we lived together. I’ve never been a “joined at the hip” kind of gal, I guess, and he came to appreciate that as he discovered he enjoyed having time to himself, a luxury he had never even known he wanted or could have before. For me, the surprise came with the acknowledgement that I did indeed like closeness, twoness, cuddling on the couch instead of sitting in my own chair, having the same someone actively in my life every single day, making decisions together, going to bed at night together and snuggling together the next morning as a start to each day.
Once we had comfortably recognized oneness within twoness, and vice versa, within our relationship, we progressed to a twoness within Oneness. It was a theological conversation I suppose that in a simplistic way went something like this: We are individuals with something we call free will, each unique, like snowflakes, yet, we are one with God and all sentient beings and so also part of a twoness. A dichotomy of sorts that is difficult to define – twoness within the oneness. And while we intellectually accept – perhaps embrace – the idea of “the other” in our world, if we are one with All, then there is no other. But we’re still individuals, right? So, oneness within twoness within The Oneness? And life is full of oneness and twoness by virtue of the multiplicity of our relationships. Eventually, we laughed over our circular thinking: Sooo, I’m an individual (oneness) within the twoness of any relationship, within the oneness of the specific group, within the twoness of a larger group, within the Oneness of God. We kept adding layers of examples of the oneness within the twoness within the oneness and . . . well, it often went on and on like that with a somewhat undefinable endpoint. Maybe you had to be there, but you get the drift. It was a long and complicated string that became difficult to keep track of sometimes, but it was a conversation we comfortably and lightheartedly returned to time and time again, enjoying the somewhat holographical picture it painted.
When coupled with my dabbling in Numerology, attention continued to be returned to that conversation, noticing that quite frequently someth